THE LAWLESS border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan has become America's most acute foreign-policy challenge. Virtually every major al-Qaeda attack or plot of the past four years has emanated from the region. Islamic militants threaten not only the nascent democratization and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, but the very stability and future cohesion of nuclear-armed Pakistan.
We recently toured the front lines of this struggle, traveling through such eastern-Afghanistan border provinces as Khowst, Paktika, Kunar and Nuristan. The variety of climactic conditions was astonishing. We made our way by helicopter over snow-packed glaciers, followed by vast, empty deserts to bucolic valleys with flowing rivers coursing through steep, forested hills. In spite of the idyllic scenery, the picture is grim. A concatenation of at least fourteen different terrorist and insurgent groups based in Pakistan regularly traverse the border to target Afghan security forces and the American and NATO military units stationed there. These militants include a range of Taliban groups, al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and other radical Afghan religious zealots such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and their Pakistani jihadi counterparts such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. The problem, as one military intelligence officer candidly told us, is obvious: "We recognize the border. They don't."
